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If you were watching the Leafs on TSN the other night, you’d have noticed former Leafs coach Paul Maurice back in studio between periods. Maurice looked none the worse for wear after a year coaching Metallurg Magnitogorsk in Russia. Maurice braved the cold weather, air safety concerns and language barrier and returned home with tales unlike anything he’d seen in 16 NHL seasons. The Star caught up with the 46-year-old Maurice for a lively conversation about his Russian experience:

Q: What led to your decision to return home from coaching in Russia?

A: It was an incredible experience, and certainly not always easy, but it was exactly what I hoped for, which was a challenge professionally and a life experience. But because of the age of my kids, it wasn’t something I could keep doing for more than the year I had there. They offered me a two-year contract extension, but I made my decision: Family first.

Q: It sounds like it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. How hard was it to make that decision to come home?

A: It was a full challenge every day. I think the decision was made while the year was going on. My kids are in high school, so they need their dad around. The hard part was the players on the team, getting to know them and really seeing in many of them things I will never forget. But it’s family first here.

Q: What will you remember most about the players?

A: Well, take for instance a kid by the name of Viktor Antipin (defenceman). He’s what, 19, 20 years old . . . he wasn’t even on our depth chart, but (assistant coach) Tom Barrasso . . . saw this kid and said, “Hey, this kid’s going to be a good player.” And just maybe having some kind of influence on a kid like that. I enjoyed all the players, and I had (Evgeni) Malkin, (Sergei) Gonchar, (Nikolai) Kulemin, (Ryan) O’Reilly … and having these four NHLers was great for the team, they led work ethic in practice every day so that everyone saw that and everyone was thinking, ‘okay, that’s what it takes, that’s what it’s all about.’ Nik (Kulemin) was a player with that team before, and Magnitogorsk, that’s his hometown. He came and worked out with us for a bit, and this was two and a half months before (the NHL lockout ended), but boy, did he work hard, it was great to see. And Malkin, he practiced harder than anyone. The best of the best push themselves harder than anyone, so it was something to see for everyone there.

Q: What experience did you gain from your coaching gig there?

A: Honestly, a bit of a change of mind. I became a fan of the bigger ice surface and began wondering if you took it (to North America) and left it in place for a while, what our game would look like, because I think eventually, it’d be incredible. I became a fan of the no-touch icing too, and a lot of little things like that, that are part of the style of hockey there. But probably the biggest thing I walked away with is a blanket apology to every Russian player I ever coached. When they come to Canada and play the way they do, there’s a reason for it. Things sometimes get said about them, like they’re not tough, but I can tell you there are tough players over there. They just play the game so differently. We expect them to make adjustments in a couple of weeks when they get here, you want them to tip the puck in and chase it, adn you want them to do this and go there, and then you think they don’t want to play your game. It’s not like that at all, and you’d have to be there to see where they come from and the culture and the hockey. So a blanket apology … I have a better understanding of their world, how they train, how they play, and why they play the way they do.

Q: You are very well known in the NHL and very popular — was it the same case there for you personally?

A: Celebrity is not a big thing there. Malkin, for sure, is a rock star, he’s one of the biggest athletes in the country, but for me, it certainly wasn’t like being the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I don’t speak the language well at all so it’s not like many people could converse with me. It’s a steel town so it was kinda rustic. I came home once and my family came over there once, so the logistics of seeing my family was tough.

Q: KHL teams are famous for the Baza, the team compound and lockup. . . . Did you have to stay behind the walls of the Baza?

A: I stayed there for a few months, and the Baza set-up is roughly the same for all teams. But the one I stayed in was maybe four or five years old, so, really, it was the one of the nicest buildings in town. The Baza, you go to the Baza after a bad game, and you go there before a big game, but we didn’t do that entirely. We did it for the playoffs . . . but Tom (Barrasso) and I stayed there for a few months, then we got an apartment, and it was like anything else, grocery stores and cafes, and stuff like that.

Q: How’s your Russian?

A: I can get along a bit with it. We had a coach, Ilya Borobiev, who spoke English very well, and he was a big help. It’s what you might imagine, four or five guys who spoke English very well, four or five guys who could get by, and four or five guys who didn’t speak it at all. But you get by, and when you coach, sometimes it takes a bit to get things through, but when I wanted to (stress things), there was no problem.

Q: What’s the best thing, and the worst thing, about your experience there?

A: Being very far away from family was the toughest part by far. But professionally, it was the communication gap, not being able to communicate thoroughly was tough at times. When you’re trying to teach something, you sometimes felt it wasn’t getting through the way you wanted it to. I’d want to make them go hard sometimes, and when it came to that, I’d sometimes lengthen practice because they weren’t going as hard as I wanted them to. One time I ran practice two and a half hours I think, but that was only one time. Most of the time it was normal stuff.

Q: So much has been written and said about plane safety in Russia, especially after the crash which wiped out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team. Were you ever afraid to fly in the KHL?

A: First, let me say it (the Yaroslavl crash, which killed 43 people), was a huge setback to hockey and everyone in the country. We went to a memorial, and oh god, I remember it being like minus 36 degrees, it was so brutally cold. I had a player (who died in that crash) and I knew Brad McCrimmon (the Yaroslavl coach, who also died). . . . I offered Brad a job to coach in Carolina with me that summer before the crash happened. I remember talking to him and the phone call he had with me was very much like the one I had with my wife when I took the job with Magnitogorsk. … Brad said he was taking the job in Russia, that it was a chance he’d never have again. . . . The planes are more worn down, but I was never nervous on a plane there. These tragedies happen, and in no way do I want to trivialize what happened there, but I think you can’t live your life in fear. I never had a problem flying there, and I don’t like to fly.

Q: What was the food like there?

A: You know what? I’m not a big fast food eater. And there was a McDonald’s there, but fast food is just not prevalent there. So it’s funny, when I got back, the first thing I wanted was junk food. Honestly, I ate well there. They put a lot of time and money into how they feed the players, and like I said, there’s not a lot of junk food there. You’d have salads there a lot and all the food was cooked by someone. I lost a little body fat I had hanging around before. When I came home, my wife asked me what I wanted, she’d cook it for me, and I said pizza, that’s what I wanted. . . . I’ve been eating a lot of pizza lately.

Q: Lastly, what souvenir or memento of your coaching stint there did you bring home?

A: I have a jersey of every team I ever coached for, with the year I coached there as the number. So I have (a Magnitogorsk) jersey with 12-13 on it, and my last name is in Russian on the back. The spelling is mostly the same, the “M” is a bit different. So I brought that back, I brought a scarf back for my wife, but it’s funny, other than that, I don’t collect much. For sure, I brought home a bunch of memories I’m trying to hang on to without writing them down. It was an incredible experience.

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